Martha Nussbaum on the "capabilities approach"
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These slides are for an Introduction to Philosophy course at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, BC, Canada. They focus on an article by Nussbaum from 1997 called "Capabilities and Human Rights" (Fordham Law Review Vol. 66, No. 2).
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Martha Nussbaum on the "capabilities approach"
- 1. Martha Nussbaum The “capabilities approach” PHIL 102, UBC Christina Hendricks Fall 2015 Except images licensed otherwise, this presentation is licensed CC BY 4.0
- 2. Overall course theme: Philosophy of life and death How ought we to live? How ought we to think of our own deaths? What are our duties towards others’ lives and deaths? Plato Epicureans Stoics Sartre Camus Epicureans Stoics Nagel Rosenbaum Camus Mill Singer Thomson Nussbaum: What are the crucial aspects to living a life with human dignity? We should ensure all have those.
- 3. Vasanti Starts Creating Capabilities: The Human Development Approach (2011) with the story of Vasanti India 2011-07-18 at 07-24- 24, Flickr photo by José Antonio Morcillo, licensed CC-BY
- 4. Common approaches to considering quality of life “Capabilities Human and Rights” (1997) What do you think might be good ways to measure people’s quality of life around the world?
- 5. GNP or GDP (280-281) Problems: • Need to focus also on distribution • Too narrow a measure of quality of life
- 6. Utilitarian approaches based on preference satisfaction (281-283) Problems: • Distribution again; focus on aggregate rather than individuals • “adaptive preferences”—can reinforce inequalities
- 7. Distribution of basic rights and resources (283-284) John Rawls: focus on distribution of basic goods that all rational individuals would desire, ensuring that even the least well off have a decent level Problem: Having the rights & resources is not enough; social circumstances differences in ability& opportunity to use
- 8. The capabilities approach What Nussbaum advocates
- 9. Basics of this approach Asks: what are people “actually able to do and to be?” (285) There are certain capabilities that are required to live well/flourish as a human, to live a life with human dignity (not in this article)
- 10. Definitions Combined capabilities • Internal abilities: our own internal ability to act (289) • Social opportunities & freedoms to express those internal abilities (290) Functioning: “active realization of one or more capabilities” (Creating Capabilities p. 25 (not assigned))
- 11. Suggested list of ten central capabilities (287-288) Life Bodily health Emotions Affiliation Leisure/pl ay Other species Bodily integrity Practical reason Senses, imagination, thought Control over environment: political & material Connect to Vasanti’s story
- 12. Capabilities and Human Rights What do “human rights” mean to you? Problems with considering quality of life in terms of human rights?
- 13. Capabilities and Human Rights • Nussbaum’s definition of human rights (292) • Better to think of human rights in terms of combined capabilities (293-294)
- 14. Your thoughts Groups: please answer one of these questions on the document linked below • Does this list capture what is required to live well as a human? Anything missing? Anything there that is not required? • Any comments on the capabilities approach generally? http://is.gd/PHIL102Nussbaum